There are two major components to the concessionary changes to Article 8: Field Service currently proposed by the Company. The first is domestic field service, which we have performed for over forty years. The second component is international field service, which we have performed since the AirTran acquisition. The Article 8 language does not differentiate between the two, and our position is that the current language applies evenly regardless of location of the broken aircraft. Although this work protection was reiterated in LOA #1, along with other duplicate protections, we do not see this work going away with the sunset of LOA #1.

The Company has proposed the following change to "domestic" field service: "Where borrowed, robbed, or other parts can be obtained locally, qualified vendors may be used to perform emergency field service. This describes current practice." We absolutely disagree that this is a current practice. Although the Company does routinely violate our contract in this respect, we grieve any of the occasions that are brought to our attention. In fact, it was agreed previously with different Company leadership that this is a violation of our contract. However, the current Company leadership has made the statement that they do not support the previous agreement their predecessors entered into with your Union. Instead, the Company is asking to be allowed to have vendors work our field service where borrowed, robbed, or other parts can be obtained locally up to 25 times a year.

The international component of the Company’s concessionary proposal requests that we waive all of our rights to field service outside of the 48 contiguous states unless there is an RII item. We understand the obvious where there are limited opportunities to get technicians and parts to a location with minimal service. Therefore, we offered to provide the Company relief from the existing Article 8 language up to ten (10) times a year. We offered them this relief for any field service event regardless of location. We feel that our offer presented a viable middle ground that would give the Company relief in some of its most extreme situations. Regardless, we would absolutely perform any field service containing RII items.